A full structural and condition walk of a Baltimore rowhouse, done before you go to settlement or before you decide how to phase a rehab you already own. We start in the basement with joist bearing, pockets, sill conditions and water paths, then work up floor by floor checking wall plumb, framing, chimney breasts and party wall conditions, then the roof deck, the rear wall and the cornice. We take photographs of everything that matters. Three business days later you get a written report: what is structural, what is cosmetic, what is urgent and what can wait five years. A rough order of magnitude cost in three tiers, low, likely and bad case. And a plain ranked list of what to fix first if the money runs out, because it usually does. If the house should not be bought, the report says so in the first paragraph. Flat fee for a standard two or three story city rowhouse up to about 1,600 square feet. Larger houses or ones with an existing partial rehab are quoted as a half day. Scheduled Tuesdays and Thursdays, usually within two weeks.

A full structural and condition walk of a Baltimore rowhouse, done before you go to settlement or before you decide how to phase a rehab you already own. We start in the basement with joist bearing, pockets, sill conditions and water paths, then work up floor by floor checking wall plumb, framing, chimney breasts and party wall conditions, then the roof deck, the rear wall and the cornice. We take photographs of everything that matters. Three business days later you get a written report: what is structural, what is cosmetic, what is urgent and what can wait five years. A rough order of magnitude cost in three tiers, low, likely and bad case. And a plain ranked list of what to fix first if the money runs out, because it usually does. If the house should not be bought, the report says so in the first paragraph. Flat fee for a standard two or three story city rowhouse up to about 1,600 square feet. Larger houses or ones with an existing partial rehab are quoted as a half day. Scheduled Tuesdays and Thursdays, usually within two weeks.